The Department for Transport has ruled out providing a £7 million contribution towards the costs of building a new London Overground station in south London considered key to a proposed 2,000 home development around Millwall's New Den football ground.

I'm not precisely sure how symbolic, emblematic, symptomatic or otherwise the information in that paragraph is of the future of the mighty capital, as the men from the coalition crunch numbers and everyone else bites their nails. London Reconnections tells the story too, but with a lot of deep background suggesting that the previous regime had been withholding the chequebook from the proposed Surrey Canal Road station on the East London Line Extension.

Nonetheless, R&R's encapsulation of how much else can fall apart when a relatively small lump of public investment is withheld - housing and regeneration as well as transport facilities - does look to bear out the idea I floated earlier this week - that while the headline projects close to the Mayor's political heart seem to be broadly safe from George Osborne's big, eager cleaver, lots of smaller schemes that could bring big social benefits relative to their scale are likely to be hacked or amputated.

There seems no escaping it: spending cuts, their targets, their size and their impact on Londoners - especially those who will feel their effects will be the big theme of the coming months. This has been a slightly bitty week for me, not long back from my holiday and with the kids still off school. Next week I'll have both feet firmly back under the desk and pointing resolutely towards next week's now certain Tube strikes and the possibility of a continuing autumn of budgetary discontent. Till then, as ever, thanks for reading this blog and have a good weekend.